


A Separate Peace

by thepurplewombat



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Canonical Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-12
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-06-01 20:11:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6534712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepurplewombat/pseuds/thepurplewombat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While he lived, she could promise herself that one day he would come home, and she and her wayward wanderer could build for themselves a separate peace</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Separate Peace

She had always known he’d leave one day, and go in the world where she could not find him or keep him from harm. It was what he was, feckless and a wanderer, and she loved him for it.

And one day he had left, left the pieces of their broken home on the floor and fled the war which had never been his war, and she had never been able to find it in herself to be anything other than grateful. Grateful for how long he had stayed, grateful for how hard he had tried, this man of whose nature staying and trying had never been a part.

At least, she comforted herself, he was still alive. She could feel it, feel the last glowing coals of their love, a warm spot just under the heart of her, and when she worried (and she did worry, and fear for her reckless wondering wanderer) she could turn her mind to it and feel the Force reaching out to him, a soft quiet song _he is safe, he is alive, he may come back one day_. Maybe one day, when they were both old (as if they weren’t old already but ah! There were so many years yet left to them) and the war was over (would the war ever be over? She had thought it ended with the death of her father, but no, the Dark Side rose again, ever hungry. Perhaps _the war_ would never be over, she thought on her dark days, and in the shadows of her darker empty nights, it would be only _her_ war that was over, when she, too, went on the final journey and became one with the Force at the end of all things), he would come home to her, or she would join him on his wanderings, and they would spend their last days together in a kind of peace, perhaps. It was a hope. It was a chance, while he was still alive, that there was a space in the future where they could be happy together again.

And then he had come back, or she had come to him, and she had had to send him after the child they had made together, the child who had shattered the last strength of their true and honest love.

She had thought to fix what was broken in them, thought that perhaps this could bring back her lost ones, the brother who had broken and the son who had shattered, both so weak (no, not weak, but brittle like untampered steel, which broke but would never bend – they never could understand the strength of the willow, the men in her family) under the endless onslaught of the Dark Side.

And then – she stopped mid-sentence and her knees failed her, her breath caught – the light went out, and she knew that he was gone. Knew that her wanderer had tried one last time, and had gone on the journey from which there was no return. He had died, and she would never again feel the warmth under her heart that was the thought and power of him, never take strength from the love they still shared – even yet, even after all these long years apart.

Her love was dead and her son was a patricide, and her brother had fled before his shadows, and she was alone.

She stood alone before the storm again, as she had when she was young – oh, but it was harder now, harder than it had ever been, harder than her heart could bear – and she would fight, as she always had. Until the end of the war, or the end of her.

But in her heart she would always be in the moment where the light had gone out, and her reckless wanderer had, at last, wandered home. And her soul would ever be waiting for her own final journey to start, so that perhaps on the other side of the journey never taken twice, she and her wayward wanderer may find a separate peace.

**Author's Note:**

> So I was browsing tumblr and I saw http://jaggedrain.tumblr.com/post/142675042345/matthewdaddariohs-leia-feeling-it this post, and I...well, I had some feels.


End file.
